Google has been working on its
Project Tango augmented reality platform since at least 2014, but that’s
just when it was unveiled. A lot of work has gone into improving the
way phones analyze their environments, but does that translate well into
consumer products? In the case of the first official Tango phone,
that’s a big, fat “no.” The Lenovo Phab2 Pro is available unlocked for
$500, but the reviews have not been kind.

The reviews have called out three main issues with the Phab2 Pro, the most obvious of which is that this phone is huge.
I don’t mean it’s huge like we call the V20 or Pixel XL “huge.” This
phone is almost a tablet. In fact, there are Amazon tablets that are
smaller. The Phab2 Pro has a 6.4-inch screen and beefy aluminum frame.
Usually I’d praise the use of an aluminum unibody design, but in this
case it makes the phone incredibly heavy. Ars Technica points out it weighs more than half a pound.

As a consequence of being gigantic, the Phab2
Pro’s ergonomics are off. The buttons are difficult to reach, and the
fingerprint sensor is much lower on the back than it should be. One of
the Tango sensor windows is where you’d expect the fingerprint sensor to
be, so you smudge up with your finger constantly.

Speaking of the Tango sensors, the Phab2 Pro’s
modest hardware doesn’t seem to be up to the task of using them. The
hardware performance is issue number two. Tango includes a depth sensor,
IR projector, and a motion tracker. Combined with the phone’s internal
gyroscope and accelerometer, it knows where in the world it is and how
its position relates to other objects. You can use this to measure
things, place virtual objects in the real world, and so on. The Phab2
Pro just gets very laggy when you’re doing it.

This phone has a Snapdragon 652 SoC, which is a
mid-range chip. Lenovo says the software has been tuned to pipe all the
Tango data through efficiently, but that was not my experience, nor
were other reviewers impressed. It can’t keep up
with phones running Snapdragon 820 and 821 chips. Even some older
devices best it. The Phab2 Pro has a big 4050mAh battery, but the phone
runs for barely over an hour while utilizing the Tango sensors.

The performance issues in Tango apps are
obvious, especially the Matterport Scanner, which is probably the most
effective demonstration of Tango. It lets you make 3D scans of objects
and room. It’s just very slow and buggy. Many of the other apps and
games feel like tech demos, and the selection is poor.
This is the third major issue cited in Phab2 Pro reviews. All the games
are one-trick ponies and the apps are just sluggish and buggy enough to
be frustrating to use, even if you have a use for them. By and large,
developers aren’t interested in making apps for a platform that almost
no one uses. There are no killer apps for Tango, and I don’t know that
there will be one any time soon without more developer interest.

Google isn’t giving up on Tango because of one
bad phone. There will be more, and the hardware will improve. We’re
just going to need a better Tango phone before we’ll know whether or not
augmented reality is living up to the hype.